double-jeopardy-round1

Summer session is over and I have a few last thought I would like to share with you.

First, you are the most creative cohort I have had the pleasure to work with! All your projects, the blogs, the web quests and the videos confirmed it.

Second, some reminders– For those who have not done so, be sure to send me your Tech Plans by this Friday. Be sure to do the on-line course evaluations. If you haven’t met with me to do the interview, have no fear– I will track you down next fall.

Third, It would warm the cockles of my heart if you would continue your blogs through your internship. I know that will be difficult, because you have some many things you will need to be doing, but it is a good way to continue the “cohort support” while you are all working in different schools.

Finally, I want to share a video that Vicki made. She took still pictures of the “Toogles” and wrote a short story to accompany the photos. She made a “slide show” using the “Ken Burns” effect and converted it to a video with her voice over. It is a great way for elementary students, who may have a difficult time negotiating a video camera, to write stories, “illustrate” them with pictures and create videos. Vicki plans on having her class do that next year and she will post the videos on her class blog.

THE TALE OF THE RUNAWAY TOOGLES

The final assignment for class is for you to write a “Technology Plan.”  The details are on the word document linked below. Please write this paper and e-mail it back to me by Friday July 18th.  Remember that, after Monday, I will be meeting individually with each of you this week during the 1-2 class time. If there is a particular day, T-TH, that would work best for you, let me know.

edu-613-technology-plan

Well, things were a little quite on the blogfront last week. Uploading your videos was pretty much the extent of the activity except for:

Jamie, who shares an interesting recipe for bean brownies. I am pretty adventurous when it comes to food, so , even though it sounds — what is the word I am searching for?? Oh yes, icky– , I will give it a try.

Aimee, who shares some painful times. Aimee, ignore those who say you should “get over it.” Cherish your memories of your Mom and accept the fact that certain times of the year will be hard to deal with. As you say, there are some losses you will never “get over.”

Blake, who shares “Explosions in the Sky” and some thoughtful insights on the media coverage of politics.

And, Sara, who has been engaged in “home improvement.”

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE FOR THE “TOOGLES”

Click on the link below to vote for the Toogles. Be sure to review the videos before voting because you can only vote once.

Results will be announced next week.

UPDATE-  When you vote, note that there are two pages to the ballot. The first page consists of choices about the videos in general. The second page is about actors/actresses. Be sure to hit “continue” to go to the second page.  The Toogles will be handed out Tuesday at the “Goose.”

The Toogles

Today we are going to talk about zotero, a pretty interesting on-line firefox plugin that allows you to create an on-line bibliographical data base. I also added some delicious links (onlineapps is the tag) to a number of other online applications that can take the place of computer based office suites like Microsoft Office and Open Office.

It is important to note that these on-line apps can’t do everything that Word, Excel or Powerpoint can do and, because they are on-line, they tend to be a bit sluggish. In addition, you have to be on-line to access them. The big advantage is that you don’t have to worry about hard drive crashes or lost flash drives and–most important for poor grad students–they are free.

Jamie takes us to Garden Valley where she grew up. She compares the emic (insider) and etic (outsider view) of the place and points out the value of being in a place that is “technology free” if you want a little peace and quiet.

Aimee has caught the “Fashion Bug” and will be out of commission for up to 30 hours a week! Let’s hope she avoids a meltdown.

Michael has been thinking about the relationship between leadership and courage. He shares a video with a message about courage.

Blake & Richard win the prize for being the first to complete their video and post it to the blog. I am not sure what the video was trying to teach us (maybe I should watch beginning porpoise … err dolphin… first). I have to admit it was pretty entertaining! The filming and editing was quite well done, with one exception. Throughout most of the film Tony’s face was hidden in shadow.

At first I thought it was because Blake and Richard failed to watch my “How to Make a Video” (Part 1 of a 1 part series) where I point out the importance of choosing a camera angle that avoids having the sun directly behind the actor. But, after some thought, I realized that the shadow was intentional. Obviously, “Tony” (not his real name) was a mafia hitman in the witness protection program and agreed to be filmed with the assurance that his identity would be hidden. This has to be the answer because the only scene where “Tony’s” face can be seen is obscured by some strange cloud formation which results in blurry, unrecognizable facial features. Good work guys, but a word to the wise— stay clear of the mafia if you know what is good for you.

Have any of you seen Jennifer’s motivation? She seems to have lost it. Actually, I think she did a wise thing by floating the river. I am guessing she will come back with super motivation for the last two weeks.

If you haven’t heard about Johnna’s news, check out her blog. She e-mailed the Idaho Indian Education Coordinator and got a great response. The lesson to be learned is to connect with anyone who you think might help you with your research. You will be surprised as to the generosity of most people when they know that you share an interest of theirs.

Dennis has been adding lots of valuable links to aid in your research. It is a good example of how useful a class blog can be to a teacher.

Richard shares his long range political aspirations with us. He want to run for the school board. He is also looking for a good campaign slogan. All I could come up with is “Zuercher– a worker not a lurker”. Admittedly, it is pretty lame. So, creative grad students, help him out.

Sara has been keeping a calender record of summer session and shares last week with us. I wonder how she knew that I was going to have a series of 20 “Scrubs” trivia questions on my final along with a 40 point essay, “Is there a positive correlation between playing Halo on a daily basis and effective lit review writing?”

Josh dedicates a quote about roads or paths taken and not taken to Blake. At first I thought he meant this Blake, but later realized he meant this Blake. Josh muses about the difference it might make concerning the paths taken or not taken. Ah, a wonderful metaphor– Is it Frost’s, or Ts’ui Pen’s, or Lao Tzu’s path we are talking about?

Yellow Pine Willie has started his blog and shares some photos with us.

Thanks for all the good blogging and I hope you all had a great 4th. See you Monday in Covell.

EndNote X2 Tutorial

This is a quick overview of the referencing application EndNote X2. You can download a fully functioning copy of the application that will work for 30 days at their website

Creating an Endnote Library

Once you have installed Endnote and open it for the first time, you will see the window above. It is a good idea to start by clicking on “Learn about Endnote,” if you have never used the program before. EndNote has a lot of features and, consequently, a rather large learning curve for the user that wants to know everything the program is capable of. If you just want to begin and learn as you go, you can click on the “Create a new library” link. A library is the name for Endnote’s central data base. You can create as many libraries as you want, one for each project. If you have a number of libraries and decide that a reference you have in one library can also be used in another, it is simply a matter of opening each library and “dragging” the reference from one to the other. Because I have already created a library, I will click on “Open an existing library.”

The Endnote Interface

This is what the Endnote interface looks like once you have created a library and entered some references. You can create, sort and edit refernces from the menu at the top (1). Or, you can use the buttons below the menu (2). The window on the left (3), tells you have many references you have in the library and any groups you might have created. In the main window (4), you can scroll through each reference and sort them based upon author, year, title, journal or reference type. The window at the bottom (5), shows how the reference highlighted (here it is an article by Frana) will appear in the reference file you have chosen. Note that the default style is “annotated.” You will want to go to the narrow window at the left and below the main menu (6) and “select another style.” In our case, choose APA 5th. You can also go to the “edit” menu and “preferences” and change all the font settings from the default (Ariel) to times new roman 12p so that the citations and reference page you create will be in the same font as your thesis.

Working with references

Above is an example of a completed reference in the library. You can simply type the approprate information into the fields or, as I will show later, you can import references from on-line data bases like ERIC. Notice the “Reference Type.” (1). It is important that you choose this accurately, because Endnote formats your reference base upon the type. This example is a conference proceeding. It would be formatted differently if the type were “book” or “journal article.” It is a good idea to include the abstract (2) in the reference. You can also type in your notes or include quotes from the article righ in the reference. If you have a copy of the article in pdf or word, you can link the reference to the document right in Endnote and bring it up whenever you wish. I will show this later in the tutorial.

Using Endnote with Word

Endnote works seamlessly with Word. Once you have installed Endnote, you should have an Endnote menu bar within word itself. You can use “cite while you write” to insert citations from Endnote into your document. At the same time, Endnote will be creating a reference page at the end of your document correctly formatted in APA style.

determine where you want to insert your citation in your document

Determine where you want to insert your citation and put your cursor there. Here, it could be after “important study”and before “was conducted”.

Highlight the citation in Endnote

Go to Endnote and highlight the appropriate citation. In this case, the Newbill and Stubbs study.

Insert the citation in the document

Click on the “insert citation” button on the Endnote menu in word (1) and the citation will appear, properly formatted in the document (2).

The citation will also appear in the reference section at the end of the document

The citation will be added to the reference page alphabetically by author and in correct APA style

Attaching files

If you have a copy of the reference in pdf or word format, you can link the complete document to the reference in Endnote. Just go to the drop down references menu and choose file attachments. That will take you to a window where you can browse and choose the file.

A file attached to a reference

Here is the same reference with the full article attached as a pdf. If you click on the icon, the article can be read.

Importing references from on-line sources

Let’s say I did an EBSCO search (this works for any EBSCO data base as well as any other data base available through the library) for articles on “classroom climate” and decided that I wanted to add the one above. I would first download the article as a pdf file and then click on “add” to add it to my search folder.

Importing references from on-line sources

At the top of the search page, it now reads that my “folder has items”, so I click on the folder button.

Importing references from on-line sources

Next, I select the article or articles I want to add to Endnote (1) and (2) click on “export.”

Importing references from on-line sources

Finally, I choose “Direct Export to Endnote” (1) and (2) click on “save.” You may want to come back to this search, in which case you might want to “uncheck” (3) the “Remove these items” box before saving.

Locate your library

It will ask you to locate your Endnote library. In this case, it is school culture.enl

Imported Citation

Here is the reference as it appears in Endnote. It is ready to be inserted as a citation in my document, properly formatted in APA style.

All groups have turned in their storyboards.
Now the real work begins!

It appears that no one took me up on the suggestion to use Video Communicator or iStopmotion, which means that you will all need to find your locations and begin shooting.

It also appears that all of your groups have access to a video camcorder. If that is not the case, you can borrow one from the department. Just ask me on Monday.

Decide with your group a good time to “shoot.” If you need to use class time, that is fine. I will assume that you will all be filming and editing this week and will be around to help as I am needed. Please remember that editing is quite time consuming, so don’t wait until the end of the week to start filming.

Equipment

firewire port for PCs

Firewire port for Mac books

Make sure that your laptop has a firewire port so that you can upload your video from your camcorder. You will also need the proper cable.

Applications for editing

You will need either iMovie (MAC) or Movie Maker (PC) applications in order to edit your movie. Both are free and come bundled with your operating system. iMovie should be on your dock in OSX and in the Utilities folder on Windows XP or Vista.

I have created a new page on the blog “Tutorials for Video Editing” that should be helpful if you have never edited video before. Please watch one or more before you begin shooting so that you will know the possibilities for creating your final video.

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